To make a mark for oneself in the
field of management (where fads are
fashionable), it takes decades. All the
more so in an abstract field like
Change Management.
Congratulations professor for having
provided such a remarkable
intellectual leadership in the field of
change management. Your work on
change management is an
indispensable citation in any work
related to change management. What
was the trigger for embarking upon a
holistic and thorough research on the
topic? What were the antecedents?
The antecedents for the change
research were a decision I made after
receiving my Ph.D. I decided to go
into practice a job at Corning Inc.,
instead of taking an academic job.
I always had a bent to the practical
and knew that to understand
organizations, one had to be close to
the phenomena. Corning hired me as
a researcher and I initially thought
that my job would be to do studies of
various problems for the human
resource function. The trigger for my
change research was a call for help I
received from a small start-up
manufacturing plant in the company.
Its management had read Douglas
McGregors book Human Side of
Enterprise. They wanted to become a
participative "Theory Y" plant to
avoid unionization and to improve
productivity .
I knew little about organization
change though I had read McGregor's
book. I took the assignment and for 4
years I worked with management as a
consultant and action researcher. This
introduced me to the problem of
change. Based on initial positive
results and evaluations by
management of my work, I received a
call from a division manager about
inter functional conflict in his business
unit (marketing, manufacturing and
product development were at each
other's throats) and the negative impact
of this on new product development
a strategic imperative for his business.
This let to a 5 year long change effort
and a program of action research
around the effort.
After I became an academic at
Harvard Business School I continued
to respond to requests for help from
executives as a way of learning. I have
responded to the following requests
for help.
Plant Manager and HR Manager
Can you help us become a
participative Theory Y plant?
Business Unit Manager
Can you help me understand the
root of conflict between marketing,
manufacturing and product
development and help me change the
organization to eliminate these
problems?
CEO and VP for Strategy and HR
We have great strategy but cannot
implement it effectively. Can you help
us become a company capable of
implementing strategy?
General Manager HR Manager
My organization is implementing a
new strategy and is having great
difficulty doing it. Can you help us?
Questions like these are broad and
lead one into a systemic/holistic
examination of the organization. They
provide an opportunity to develop
new insights about organizations and
the problem of changing them. If
qualitative and quantitative data
(wherever appropriate) is collected
and participant observations are
made, it is possible to develop a
coherent body of knowledge about
organizations and organization
change. One needs to do this with the
knowledge of existing theory and
research and connect one's own
action research to the literature.
